Eww, ick, gross


I get a bit of grief about showing spider photos, but have you ever seen closeups of insects? Sheesh. Hairy angular beasties with intricate mouthparts and creepy genitalia jutting out. I don’t know how anyone can stand to look at them.

Anyway, take a look at the gallery and shudder. You can reassure yourself that good, sweet, adorable spiders will eat them all.

Comments

  1. davidc1 says

    I saw the photos in the Guardian ,i was going to send you the link so you could see for yourself .
    I thought it might have helped wean you off your Spider kick .
    Repeat after me .
    “Six legs good ,Eight legs bad ”
    “Six legs good ,Eight legs bad “

  2. voyager says

    They’re beautiful – full of colour, iridescent, and functionally well designed. The photography is amazing And the extreme close- ups make these insects look like fabulous wee beasties. What a great way to start my morning.

  3. davidc1 says

    “Eight legs good, six legs food. Did I get it right?!
    HAHA ,don’t know how to break it to you pampa ,but Insects do eat Spiders .

    @3″ functionally well designed” don’t you mean Evolved ?

  4. Pierce R. Butler says

    Hairy angular beasties with intricate mouthparts and creepy genitalia jutting out.

    Hey, I resemble that remark!

  5. magistramarla says

    First thing I thought of when I saw this picture was Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers”.
    I read the book long ago, but I couldn’t stand those films!

  6. davidc1 says

    Don’t like to admit it ,but sometimes i am disgusted by close up photos of insects ,mainly of Flies .

  7. flange says

    These are stunning photos. Thanks for finding them.
    Nice also that it didn’t take a $1 million grant to take a team to the Solomon Islands to look for undiscovered fauna for photos like this.

  8. Mark says

    Coooool, the snakefly. One of them flew in my window and landed on my laptop screen just yesterday. This will require further reading. To the archive!

  9. bobphillips says

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantula_hawk
    I am not aware of any spider that takes them on. One I caught in AZ when I was kid, I had to use pliers to force the insect pin through the mesonotum. They hunt and paralyze tarantulas in the tatantula’sr burrow, lay an egg on the spider for the wasp larva to feed. The entire family Pompilidae are spider wasps. Also many species of other wasps will hunt spiders. Bwhahahah…

  10. davidc1 says

    @10 I took a photo of one of them beasties in Marathon Texas .Since learnt the sting from one of them is very
    painful ,so i am glad i didn’t try and move it to a better spot to take the photo as i was going to .

    And once many years ago i was sitting in a English wood taking in the joys of nature ,looked where i was going to put my hand ,i saw some kind of Wasp dragging a Spider off to it’s nest .